Monday, March 30, 2015

Just When You Thought it Was Safe to Come Out of the Closet

The Religious Freedom Restoration Act? Seriously? More like the Sexual Bigotry Free Card Act.
By fall 2010, only five states had gay marriage. A little over four years later, so many states have it that it's hard to count and the answer depends on whom you ask (I think the latest number I saw was 37). During the Obama administration, DADT had fallen, rights and benefits were given to same sex federal employee couples and there are more gay people in elected office than at any time in US history.
Anyone of even local notoriety or authority using anti gay slurs are often suspended, fired, pressured to resign or hounded out of office. As Barilla found out last year, any business not friendly to their LGBT customers (who have enormous spending power) or hostile to gay rights can expect to be pilloried and boycotted with the planet's lightning-fast social media. Even small businesses were shunned into oblivion once a refusal of services to gay customers was exposed by that same potent social media.
The tide had turned, we thought, and it was safer than ever to come out of the closet. You have lots of friends and it really does get better.
So it's difficult to understand what Indiana Governor and former Congressman Mike "I Haven't Had an Orgasm Since the Clinton Administration" Pence was thinking when he signed into law the Religious Freedom Restoration Act or what the Indiana legislature was thinking when they ratified it. To anyone with one eye and a handful of neurons, it's essentially a carte blanche to discriminate against gay people by pulling the religion card. It's a transparently sleazy right wing piece of shit disguised as "preserving" and "restoring" "religious freedom" already granted to all by the First Amendment. It blatantly gives right wing-owned businesses the legal means to refuse service to gay clientele or that perceived to be gay (but not, thankfully, protection against being boycotted and ridiculed all over the planet).
When interviewed by George Stephanopolopolopolopolos Michael Dukakis, Jr last Sunday about the bill, he was asked point blank six simple yes or no questions as to whether or not the bill would make legal discrimination against LGBT people and he whiffed on every one of them. The very fact that Pence signed that steaming homophobic piece of shit into law behind closed doors speaks volumes. He knew it was either wrong or would be unpopular. And, as palpable as his typical right wing cowardice, his typical right wing dissembling on TV yesterday morning proved that he was trying to present this as a religious freedom bill that was nakedly designed by the Indiana legislature to drive gay people out of the state.
Also, in typical right wing fashion, he blamed the media for the brouhaha over it, mansplainin' to the rubes that the bill was mistaken and misinterpreted, that the vast left wing conspiracy was making a mountain out of a molehill.
The next state that might ratify a similar antigay bill is Arkansas and if by some miracle that festering buttocks sore of a state doesn't (which actually looks likely that it won't), 19 others currently have such laws on the books.
About the closest Pence came to actually recognizing the extreme unpopularity of the new bill (besides signing it behind locked doors) was to pledge to ask the legislature to "clarify" the bill.
No, that's not necessary. I think it's pretty clear what it means.
The backlash was immediate and severe. The NCAA openly floated the idea that in the future, the Final Four would be held in a state other than Indiana. Angie's List, also headquartered in Indianapolis, quickly axed plans for an expansion that would have cost nearly $50,000,000. Notorious right winger Charles Barkley even condemned the new law. The NBA, WNBA and NFL have all made discontented grumbles of late. When all is told, Pence and the Republican-run state legislature could cost the state over $100,000,000 in boycotts.
The law and its avowed intent should infuriate liberal Christians (Yes, there are some) for having their faith used as a straw man to discriminate against a minority. When cornered on the bill, Pence doubled down and said neither he or anyone would change it nor was it on his "agenda" to give "special protections" to the LGBT population of Indiana.
It reminds me of that cartoon where a bunch of overweight Teabagger/NRA types are nailing Christ to the cross and one obese individual holding the hammer yells at Christ to stop whining because he's oppressing their religious liberty.
But this craven right wing dissembling and dressing up this discrimination bill is an obvious attempt to throw red meat to the notoriously homophobic evangelical right wing, LBGT people providing the meat. But considering the vast strides taken by that same community on a national level, with intolerance of homophobia having long since reached alltime highs, it's perplexing to me why the Indiana legislature and Pence thought they would be immune to the backlash.
It's just as perplexing why we're as surprised that homophobia does still exist as we are when faced with evidence of racism or misogyny or Islamophobia.
As previously stated, other states are seriously considering similar, or worse, legislation (Although Georgia recently postponed its hearings on a similar measure). A gay presidential candidate would have as much chance getting elected as Pence being made a Grand Marshall of Indianapolis's next gay pride parade. Gay men and lesbians are still getting beaten, or worse, in the streets. And the "great" state of Texas has absolutely no laws protecting gays and lesbians from any discrimination at all (no, not even hate crime laws). Despite the impressive strides the Obama administration has taken in gay rights, DOMA, that other execrable evil from the Clinton years, is still more firmly embedded in the law books than fly shit.
Right wingers pathetically try to turn it around back on my community and claim we're screaming for "special rights" as if we were rich scions suffering from Affluenza or a Wall Street bankster. But what they deliberately ignore is the fact that my peoples' struggle continues and will continue for at least decades to come because, if we're seeking "special protection", it's only because we're singled out for special persecution.

Addendum:If you've surfed in to read this, it's probably because of my good friend and Constant Reader Tengrain at Mock, Paper, Scissors care of Crooks and Liars. In case you haven't already been made aware of it by Tengrain, Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, others and myself, we'd just suffered a death in the family. Details can be found here but let's start by saying I've had to make a significant outlay of cash over the final days of March that put us behind the 8 ball. So anything you could do to push the wolves from the door another month would be tremendously appreciated.

Sunday, March 29, 2015

Top Ten Pet Peeves About Literary Agents

Yeah, I know I'm a bad blogger, No Cheetos. Specifically, I'm a bad political blogger and I honestly do feel guilty about disappointing what few faithful readers I have by not providing content on a regular basis that would, however inadequately, justify the donations I've been receiving for the last six years. And I will get to Ted Cruz, Mike Pence and his piece of shit anti-LGBT law and so forth in good time.
But the annual round of submissions of Tatterdemalion to literary agents, something I hadn't done in a year, has built up a lot of resentment in me. This has been steadily building since I'd made the rounds of literally hundreds of agency websites since late last month when I'd begun the querying process. And these pet peeves of mine aren't just mine and inspired merely by frustration. Others have said the same things I have, including this guy who'd passed on a story about another writer who'd punked 100 literary agents with Kurt Vonnegut, Jr's work and got rejected by all 100 of them.
So these are my top ten pet peeves regarding literary agents, accumulated both over the last 19 years and the last month.

1) Discover Norton

One of the most immediately apparent differences between British literary agents and their US counterparts, aside from openly soliciting the first 30-50 pages of your manuscript, is their willingness to accept email attachments. Email clients such as Yahoo, which had really taken a nose dive in quality and dependability over the last year and a half, often truncate emails. This can be especially galling and embarrassing when US agents insist on your pasting everything in the body of the email and it gets cut off in mid sentence or right after the salutation.
Antivirus software exists. Use it, make friends with it and stop acting as if every author in the English-speaking world is out to give your precious laptop a virus. Automatically deleting unread legitimate submissions based on a paranoia bespeaks of a mindset I wouldn't want in someone working for me.

2) And yes, you would work for me if I choose to hire you.

In the generation since publishers made literary agents a necessary evil and primary gatekeepers, they've gotten so arch and bloated with arrogance it's a miracle these people, for want of a better word, can still find people to have sex with them. Among the manifestations of this hubris and arrogance is the more than suggested perception that they run the show. You do not.
Because in the real world, the person who makes no more than penultimate decisions and makes 15% of the money that's earned is the hired help. The employee. Stop assuming we're naifs who don't know anything about the business. Until you were shoehorned into the publishing process 30 or so years ago, authors like me approached publishers directly, negotiated their contracts and managed their own careers. Our intelligence and pragmatism hasn't atrophied just because you were artificially glued onto what used to be a streamlined process. Again, for clarity's sake, You are the employee, the hired help. You work for us, not vice versa. Know your role and act accordingly.

3) Your website sucks.

In virtually 100% of the literary agency websites I've been to, I have had to lean forward and strain my eyes to read pale grey font against a white background. I've even seen yellow font against white. For people who are obsessed with legibility and proper formatting in snailmail submissions, you sure care little over whether or not people can read your ghost fonts. Do all you agents farm out website design to the same sadistic prick?
Also, minimalism make work effectively in Japanese art but not in modern day website design. You want submission guidelines obeyed? Tell us what the fuck they are. Give us something to go on other than your street address and a phone number you forbid us from calling. To give you guys an idea of what I'm talking about, go to former Simon & Schuster senior editor-turned literary agent Bob Mecoy's website to see what I mean (Oh, that Bic pen pointed directly at my left eye doesn't look menacing at all, Bobbo). Or this monolithic, virtually noninteractive piece of shit by William Morris Endeavor that just screams, "Fuck off and (sniff) die."

4) Here, let me get some KY so you can jerk yourself off better.

For people who say over and over again that they want just a brief covering letter consisting of no more than 300 words (and reasonably expecting us to make them fall impetuously and madly in love with our book during this absurd literary speed dating), you assholes sure love to talk about yourselves on your bios. More than once, I've seen agent bios that went far, far beyond the 300 or so words they allot us in droning on about where they were from ("It all started in a little log cabin in the woods of the Pacific Northwest..."), where they went to school, where they worked, what properties they sold, their marital status, their hobbies, how many kids they have, their cockapoodle's name, etc. I am not kidding about this. They actually think we give a fuck about this shit.
We don't. We're looking for business partners and so are you. So act like it. I personally don't give a fuck who's on your client list, what properties you've sold, blah blah because it has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with my particular property. So please stop making your literary agency's website look like a cheap dating site for avaricious sociopaths.

5) Yes, we can and will turn away business so fuck off and die.

However evil and collusive the deal made behind the backs of authors between you and publishers, the one decent provision was that it was supposed to continue giving authors a primary outlet for their work. The thought of sending something to a group of people so stupid as to universally reject a classic by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr is scary enough but it was what it was. Now, more and more literary agencies, starting with the bloated William Morris Endeavor Agency in Hollywood, are slamming the gates in our faces while telling us they cannot possibly take on new clients, read work that hasn't been invited or referred by another client or read submissions by unpublished writers.
Inserting you as the primary gatekeeper blocking the path to publication was bad enough but now you've gotten so arrogant and bloated with hubris you're acting just like the publishers a generation ago and look down your nose on people who've been kept from being published largely because of you and your ignorant ilk. Do your fucking job because it's not as if the current crop of bestselling authors will live forever. Your short-sighted strategy just produces an Old Boy network where only cool or connected kids get entry into the tree house. Oh, and if you're not taking on new clients or reading submissions, kindly say so before you waste anybody else's time.

6) "Make Me Fall in Love With You. You Have 30 Seconds."

As previously stated, one of the most obvious immediate differences between UK and US agents is the former's willingness to actually read some of the work being "plumped." Almost all Brits not only insist on email attachments guaranteeing viability and completedness of sample material but also actually insist on reading the material and making an informed decision. But more and more US agents choose to cut corners either out of sheer laziness or whining about their workload. These same assholes who feel the need to write their autobiographies on a business website insist we cannot cut corners, obey their every idiosyncratic edict, synopsize our work, give them a CV, our credentials and qualifications for writing the book, our marketing platform, since it's fallacious to assume massive publishing houses with publicity professionals to actually, you know, publicize their products, tell them what books similar to ours have been successfully been published in the past, why we want them to be our agent and... Oh yeah, do it in ten words or less.
This is why I call this absurdity and crime against literacy "literary speed dating."
And please stop telling us you have to be wildly, madly, impetuously, helplessly, hopelessly, heads over heels in puppy love before you can sell my book. You don't sell books for the "love of the game" or some such romantic, high-minded bullshit. As you and publishers keep telling us, publishing's a business, period. Please stop trying to make it sound like a process out of the Harlequin crap you help trowel out every month.

7) "Oh, you have a pet peeve list, too?"

Oh, yes. PLEASE do tell me how much you hate us and your job.
One of the things that gets my blood boiling at 1300 degrees Fahrenheit is when arch, arrogant douchebags waste time telling us what they hate seeing from the less conscientious of us when they should be reading sample material or selling properties. When I read pet peeve lists such as this, I get two takeaways: They hate writers and look upon us as cumbersome little door knockers with whom they'd rather not deal and they're infallible.
If you were so damned infallible, then please tell me why 90-95% of the adult fiction you rep never finds a home (a fact admitted on at least one agency website) and why am I writing my own pet peeve list? When I go to a fast food place or a gas station, I wouldn't want to hear constant pissing and moaning from the cashier about why they hate their job and their pet peeves regarding customers. Why should you be given that same latitude? Sure, you have legit gripes. I'm not saying you don't. But I don't care to hear them. And none of them apply to me or other conscientious, talented authors like me. You don't like your job? Wait tables or pump gas. Go the way of Harriet Wasserman, please.

8) "I Have the Right to Remain Silent."

No, you don't.
On virtually 100% of the agency websites I've had to endure these past few months, there's inevitably a little codecil that essentially says, "If you haven't heard from us after X weeks, please accept that as proof we wish you'll fuck off and die", or words to that effect. Citing, again, 300+ submissions a week and limited time, literary agencies are cutting more and more corners while not allowing us to do the same. Some of them even go with an email form, which just invites spam filters, because they're too lazy to read emails from people they've already decided cannot put cha-ching in their pockets.
I've already gone into some of the ways that literary agencies cheat and cut corners while expecting everyone in the business to be hunky dorey about it. But here's a list of how they do this: They want only queries first, not even a synopsis, and had better be more concise than their masturbatory ego trips. Some, hilariously, even ask for just the first page of your novel, reasonably expecting it'll hook them enough to want to lunge at the phone and call you before some other agent does. They have flunkies send off the form rejections because they can't spend the five seconds it would take to disrespect your personalized letter. You don't like "Dear Agent" letters? Well, we don't appreciate "Dear Author" letters or those without any salutation. Show some fucking professionalism, reciprocation and common courtesy. As with you, guys like me who routinely send off 200-300 proposals also work with large numbers. Only I do this in my spare time. You do this for a living. Again, do your fucking job and fuck your bullshit, one-sided self-dealt rules. Hire more agents. Hire more interns. Do what you have to do but ignoring conscientious authors is a big No no and makes authors not want to submit to you again.

9) "I'm a Mommy First and an Agent Second."

Stop saying on your websites you don't read much less rep books about children in danger or about serial killers. That's half of everything Stephen King and John Grisham ever wrote and virtually everything written by Jonathan Kellerman and Andrew Vachss. Are you telling me you'd turn them down on the incredible chance they'd actually knock on your door looking for representation?
I'm not looking for a mommy or someone who winces over harmless written words. For better or worse, I'm looking for a literary agent to sell my book to the highest and best bidder. Again, be a fucking professional and act like it. Oh, and since you keep telling me this business is so subjective, I refer you again to the 90-95% failure rate on your part. Considering how often you fail, which wouldn't fly for a second in the real world, perhaps what's called for is some objectivity. Stop pretending as if your reading tastes reflect, or are reflected by, the reading tastes of an entire nation. Readers let their acumen guide their choices. Yours are run by monetary motives and you're still wrong almost 100% of the time.

10) To Quoth the Writer, Get the Fuck Over Yourself.

Not a single literary classic in planetary history was ever sold by a literary agent. Virtually 100% of the turkeys sold to and published by legacy publishers were. Just because you were handed a protection racket by lazy, scumbag publishing executives 30 years ago doesn't make you all that. We are the people who write the books off of which you and your bedfellows in the Big Five publishing houses profit handsomely while paying us dog shit. Not one person ever bought a fucking book at a Barnes & Noble or anywhere else because of who the publisher or the literary agent who sold it was.
It's arrogant scumbags like you that are the primary reason for self-publishing's explosion over the last 7-8 years. Self-publishing's more than a pragmatic decision for those of us going that route. It's also a necessary and inevitable reaction to being treated like dog shit under your heels because in your ignorant, lazy snap decisions you don't think we can put jingle in your silk trousers or further your career ambitions.
And don't even get me started on Argo Navis...

Friday, March 27, 2015

Death in the Family

For those two or three of you who've been wondering where I've been since I last posted, here's the 411:
Mrs. JP's Mom in Vero Beach had been battling cancer for the last several years and on the 24th we got word from the family and the hospice nurse that the end was near and it could be a matter of days if not hours. This alarmed me into buying her a plane ticket back to Florida for $208 and I got her down there less than 24 hours after buying the ticket.

I just got word a couple of hours ago that Mrs. JP's Mom passed away sometime between last night and this morning. It doesn't look as if the family, which treats me as if I don't exist, will contribute a penny toward getting her home. I just had to spend yet another $141 for a return flight on April 3rd. Any other day involved air fares that went up to over a grand, for a coach seat.
Keep in mind, this is our rent and bill money I'm spending so my fiancee could spend some time with her mother in her final moments. A couple of people have pledged to help defray the expenses but not knowing how much that'll be, I'm afraid I'll have to pass the hat and ask you guys for your help.
An addendum to this little drama:
Four or five miles from TF Green Airport in Warwick, RI, my muffler fell off and was dragging behind me on the highway for 50 miles before I got pulled over by a Mass state trooper. So I had to get the muffler replaced just a few hours after I got Mrs. JP off on a plane and that cost me $237. I can post the bill, if you don't believe me.
So all told, I'm out $686 since I sent off Mrs. JP on the 25th. That's well over a month's rent. So we are really, truly hurting. And even if you can't help, please pass the word because since Tuesday I've been spending money like a horny sailor on a Manila liberty, minus the good time.

Addendum: I had to take the car back in the shop so they could finish the job since they couldn't get a crucial piece to hold up the back end of the muffler. After they did it, I was told I'd have to pay them another $27 since they hadn't billed me for the piece. So, all told, the muffler job cost me $264.

Monday, March 23, 2015

#TedCruzCampaignSlogans

Last night, Joe McCarthy 2.0 Ted Cruz announced from Liberty University that he was running for the presidency. One of my followers alerted me by DM of the twitterbomb hashtag #TedCruzCampaignSlogans and to get my jokes lined up by 8 pm. It quickly got to the fifth spot in US trends and by today, it's reached #1. What follows below are some of my own noteworthy contributions.

Saturday, March 14, 2015

Good Times at Pottersville, 3/14/15

Thursday, March 12, 2015

Bad Moments in Postal History, #439

Early last December I'd sent off my Christmas cards to dozens of my followers and contributors. This was one of them and it was returned to me just minutes ago by the postal (dis)service. Note what they did to it. Then note the motto at the top of the envelope it came in.
The digit pointing to my name and address might as well have been the middle finger. The cocksuckers didn't even reimburse me for the stamp.

Treasonous Little Freaks

Among his many memorable phrases and bon mots, Hunter S. Thompson, the Godfather of liberal political blogging, once called George W. Bush a "treasonous little freak." HST had lived just long enough to see his old nemesis Richard Nixon, through that shifting Overton Window, posthumously become a liberal through some political prestidigitation of the Far Right during the Bush II reign of error. The years 2001-2009 could arguably be called the "Gilded Dark Ages." It was a period of almost pornographic wealth for Wall Street and war profiteers and tightly-controlled anarchy in which even the slightest criticism of our fictional president (to quote Michael Moore) was considered tantamount to treason, with many seriously suggesting the ultimate penalty of death.

One can only imagine what Dr. Thompson would've written about the nest of vipers known as the 114th Congress and its immediate predecessor. As good as I like to think I am, I'm 110% confident that America's greatest gonzo journalist would've slung words of pure vitriol on a par with hydrofluoric acid while biting countless cigarette holders in two.

And the Republicans that are now running Congress thanks to tens of millions of lazy and uninformed voters and nonvoters, have proved once again that the proverbial barrel is deeper than anyone thought, with an infinite number of false bottoms. The letter to Iran written and signed by 47 Republicans in advance of a nuclear nonproliferation deal at the same time the GOP invited Netanyahu to address Congress is perhaps the greatest act of treason since Benedict Arnold.

The suspicious thisclose timing between the two ought not be dismissed, either.

Both acts of treason were designed to discredit and undermine President Obama, whose mini Cold War with Netanyahu's Israel has been long noted. The president had pointedly skipped the Prime Minister's speech last week and, before that, had already declined to meet with him during Netanyahu's visit to Washington this month. Considering America's sick fetish for protecting Israeli interests to the point of fighting proxy wars for them, defending genocide and illegal colonization of the West Bank and condemning Palestinians to live like second-class citizens at best in their own homeland, this is unprecedented. And this snubbing of the Zionist state of Israel could not go unanswered by Republicans.

So these so-called statesmen decided to draft a letter in advance of the President's negotiations with Iran promising the lifting of sanctions in exchange for nuclear nonproliferation was drafted, signed off and sent to Iran's leadership.

Don't Listen to the Muslim Usurper. Listen to Those Who Want to Nuke You Out of Existence

This letter to Iran makes absolutely no sense from any viewpoint except if one considers racist-motivated treason an acceptable form of statecraft. One doesn't have to be a Juan Cole to know Iran is a very conservative Muslim nation in which there is no separation between church and state, in which their president is a mere figurehead posing as a more secular leader. Authority is everything in Iran's government and to oppose the Ayatollahs is to oppose Allah. So what is this message supposed to convey to Iran's leadership?

"Loyal but principled opposition" aside, it shows the ruling party of our Legislative branch is at more than just stark odds with the leader of the Executive: It's working to undermine whatever effort made by our president to make the world a safer, more peaceful place. And this particular act of treason is far from the first made by a radical Republican Party that makes the ones in Nixon's time look like a Swedish hippie commune.

They have lambasted the current president while he was abroad, a huge no-no in American politics. They have hamstrung him even when he adopts their ideas and initiatives. They have voted, at last count, 56 times to deny Americans quality, affordable health care even through the tepid ACA and GOP governors have cruelly blocked Medicaid expansion in their states for purely political purposes.

The right wing has called him virtually every name in the book, had briefly floated the idea of not letting him fly on Air Force One, permission to deliver the State of the Union Address to Congress, vilified him for speaking to schoolchildren in spite of every President doing so and have threatened to secede from the union. One waits for the GOP to accuse Mr. Obama of cheating during the annual Easter Egg Roll and accusing the turkey he pardons every November of being an ISIS terrorist.

It is, in short, the longest temper tantrum in the history of American politics.

And it's embarrassing us to the point of the GOP even showing division in its once pig iron-tight ranks in light of this PR disaster. It has empowered the Iranian ayatollahs, unified the Democrats (which happens as often as a James Sensenbrenner diet) and has given the Republican brand a bigger black eye than ever.

Most damaging, it shows that our government cannot be trusted either now or in the future as the GOP made note of the fact the President will be gone in less than two years while they will be around possibly for decades, that the next president could wipe out any agreement with Iran with one stroke of the pen and invalidated by a future Congress. If that was the message the Republican Party wished to convey, that they will stab Iran in the back as readily as it will our own president, then it's the only way this letter has succeeded.

Wednesday, March 11, 2015

Public Service Announcement

I made mention of something yesterday among my many, many problems of late. Perhaps the most aggravating one was the virus to which I'd alluded. This is called "downloaditkeep", one of the most pernicious and stubborn viruses you'll ever see anywhere.

Technically, it's not as harmful to your hard drive as, say, your classic Trojan virus but it can still lead you to attack sites. You'll know it by these signs:

Your usually fast computer will suddenly start up slowly.

Your desktop and even your operating system won't load.

If you have Ad Block Plus as I do, it will bypass it virtually everywhere you go. Popup ads will suddenly start obscenely jiggling, sometimes you won't be able to block the images, much less the frames.

Virtually every random word will be turned into a hyperlink leading you to a spam or attack site.

Apparently, this piece of shit is as common as the dreaded Conficker virus I had a few years ago. I'd done simultaneous scans with Malwarebytes and Sophos Virus Removal Tool and it never finds it. I did a Norton scan today and it also did not find much less eradicate it.

A lot of well-meaning but inevitably wrong nerds tell you to do the same thing: Open your Control Panel, go to "Programs and Features" and there your nemesis will be in plain sight, helpfully waiting to be uninstalled by you.

No, it won't be there.

Then a couple of hours ago, I went to a website and finally found a guy who knew what he was talking about. So what I'll do for you here is reproduce his instructions for removing Downloaditkeep from Mozilla Firefox, assuming you use that browser. Follow these instructions to the letter and they will work.

For
Mozilla Firefox

Open Mozilla Firefox.

Then navigate on top menu and
click on Tools. It will show a drop-down list. Choose Add-ons to open the
configuration window.

Then click on Extensions. It
will display the list of installed programs.

Find the Ads by DownloadItKeep
extension. Click on the remove button to uninstall it.

To close the current window
click on the X of Add-ons Manager tab.

Then go to the address bar,
type about:config. Then click on ‘I’ll be careful, I promise!’ if it show
a warning “This might void your warranty!”.

Then type the infection name in
the search box. It will show the items which are modified by the
infection. Right click on the modified preference and click on Reset to
restore the original settings.

Now you may close the window
and restart the window.

That should get rid of the problem. You won't have to risk downloading software from a third party or anything like that.

Tuesday, March 10, 2015

Greetings From the Weeds

Hi, guys:

I'm writing you from the weeds of the
internet since I haven't had time to post in about two weeks. And if
you're still monitoring my progress and/or care to know why, here are
some reasons:

I've just finished the final edit for Tatterdemalion,
my historical thriller. Over the last week and a half, I've been
researching appropriate literary agencies to whom to send this book in
the hope that maybe, just maybe, more than half the time I'll get
an apathetic form rejection letter sent to me from some barely-literate 22 year-old
flunky right out of Smith or Oberlin. This sounds more
exhaustive than you may think. I have to check to see if they're still
in business, rep my genre, my subgenre, study submission guidelines,
whether or not they even take submissions, if they do so by email, etc.

I
know most of the literary agencies out there but it still requires a
shitload of research. In fact, I'd guess it takes at least an hour of
that just to send out one book proposal. In the last week and a half,
I've sent out 208. So do the math and chew on THAT.

Anyway,
since the line edit's finished, I'll upload the final version of my
novel to my publisher's server first thing tomorrow and put it up for
market regardless of what agents say (or don't say). And I'd be free and
clear you'd think, right?

Well, not exactly. I've
been hit with a virus that puts up obscenely jiggling ads no matter
where I go and Ad Block Plus has been rendered worthless. Just before
this, Microsoft began stalking me (Yes, Bill Gates and not some proxy
pretending to be in partnership with MS) has been literally stalking me
on my own laptop and insisting that my OS is "counterfeit" and needs to
be made legit before they shut down my own computer (Yes, those
corporate douchebags can and have done that). Trying to rectify the
situation has proved fruitless. They don't and won't care the OS I'm now using on my new/used Acer laptop ($200, purchased on Valentine's Day) was installed by the last asshole who owned it.

Plus, the car's brakes
went out not too long ago, costing me over $250, with another brake job looming
ahead and the exhaust system's next, which means more headaches down the
road. Adding to our financial woes are the last two sky-high gas bills
that have practically put us in the poorhouse.

And
the coup de grace, our biggest benefactor is retiring next month and
will have to leave us high and dry. It'll be a struggle to come up with
the rent much less the other $350 we'll need just to keep our heads
above water.

I know this is a lot to ask and is
audacious since I haven't even posted for two weeks. But life's been
thick as a brick and we just can't catch a break. Plus, Mrs. JP's 85
year-old Mom is seriously ailing and my better half is making some strident
noises that she wants to go home before the old girl succumbs and each
trip to Vero Beach costs us at minimum $400 (Don't forget, we live in
central Mass).

So if you have any spare change or a
buck or two in the sugar jar, please consider making a donation to
P'ville. As soon as I get these issues hammered out, I'll be back to
blogging (for those of you who still follow me). But our backs are so
hard up against the wall we can almost see the other side.